STARGAZING

Beyoncé Gives Her Most Personal Q&A In Years

She even talked about that viral video where she seems just a little stoned.

by Jocelyn Silver
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Instagram/@beyonce

Beyoncé covers the January 2020 issue of Elle magazine, designed to promote her new gender neutral collection for Ivy Park x adidas, out in January. And while the magazine steered clear of a conventional profile, the likes of which are dying a swift death, they didn’t go for a celebrity-on-celebrity interview, nor did they have her write an essay like her most recent cover for Vogue. Instead, the magazine conducted something like a Reddit AMA, sending Beyoncé questions sourced from the Beyhive. The result is one of the notoriously reticent star’s most personal Q&A’s in years.

In one of the highlights, the Queen Bey addressed a viral video from her Destiny’s Child days in which fans speculate she was high. “I love whales,” an 18-year-old Beyoncé says, smiling with her eyes half shut. But present-day Bey insists she was sober. “I still love whales,” she told Elle. “And I love being in the ocean. And that video was after a 16-hour press day. Not marijuana!!”

You be the judge.

Much of the interview was light and fun, revealing Beyoncé’s great sense of humor, which she’s kept separate from her public persona in recent years. Bey joked that she takes ages to get ready and so she “better look like Halle Berry” before she leaves the house; that her karaoke song is “Hotel California;” that her texts are incredibly long. She revealed that she hates being asked about pregnancy, telling the public to “get off my ovaries!”

But Beyoncé also got serious, touching on her painful miscarriages. “Success looks different to me now,” she revealed. “I learned that all pain and loss is in fact a gift. Having miscarriages taught me that I had to mother myself before I could be a mother to someone else. Then I had Blue, and the quest for my purpose became so much deeper. I died and was reborn in my relationship, and the quest for self became even stronger. It’s difficult for me to go backwards. Being “number one” was no longer my priority. My true win is creating art and a legacy that will live far beyond me. That’s fulfilling.”